Chapter 15
Ghosts Of Who We Were
~SERAPHINE~
I'm floating.
The sensation is strange—weightless and heavy at the same time, like being suspended in water that isn't wet.
There's no up or down here, no left or right, no cardinal directions to orient myself by.
Just endless, velvet darkness stretching in every direction, cradling my body in something that feels almost like peace.
Is this death?
The thought surfaces lazily, without urgency.
Is this what it feels like to finally stop fighting?
I should be afraid.
Should be panicking, clawing at the void, desperately searching for a way back to the light. That's what survivors do—they fight. They rage against the dying of it, refuse to go gently, make death earn every inch of their surrender.
But I'm tired.
So fucking tired.
The exhaustion goes deeper than bone, deeper than muscle, deeper than the physical vessel that's apparently given up on me.
It's the kind of tired that accumulates over a decade of survival—layer upon layer of trauma and violence and the constant, grinding effort of existing in a world that never wanted me to exist in the first place.
Maybe this is okay.
Floating in darkness forever is better than waking up to another day of fighting.
One-two-three-four.
The counting happens automatically—a reflex so ingrained it persists even here, in this strange liminal space between living and dying.
One-two-three-four.
Even my rituals followed me into death.
One-two-three-four.
Or maybe they're what's keeping me tethered.
One-two-three-four.
I let myself drift.
The darkness is warm here—not cold like I expected, not the frigid emptiness of a grave. It wraps around me like a blanket, like arms I haven't felt in ten years, like the embrace of someone who loved me before love became a liability.
Mom.
Dad.
The names surface unbidden, dragging emotion up from depths I thought I'd sealed shut years ago.
If I'm dying—if this is really the end—will I see them again?
Will they be waiting for me somewhere on the other side of this void, arms open, ready to hold their daughter one last time?
The thought makes something in my chest crack.
A fissure in the carefully constructed walls.
A leak in the dam I built to hold back the grief.
I miss you.
The admission echoes through the darkness, bouncing off nothing, absorbed by everything.
I miss you so much it hurts to breathe sometimes.
I miss your voice, Mom. The way you'd hum while you cleaned your blades.
I miss your laugh, Dad. The way you'd sweep me up and spin me until I was dizzy.
I miss feeling safe.
I miss feeling loved.
I miss being someone's daughter instead of someone's target.
The darkness shifts.
Not dramatically—no sudden flash of light or dramatic revelation. Just a subtle change in texture, in temperature, in the quality of the void surrounding me.
Colors bleed into the edges of my vision.
Soft ones at first. Warm golds and gentle browns. The particular shade of sunlight filtering through curtains on a lazy afternoon.
What—
The void dissolves.
And suddenly I'm somewhere else entirely.
I'm small.
That's the first thing I notice—the shrinking of my perspective, the way the world looms large and unfamiliar around me.
My feet don't touch the ground properly; they dangle from whatever I'm sitting on, swinging back and forth in that restless way children have when they're too full of energy to stay still.
Swing-swing-swing-swing.
Four times.
Even then.
Even as a child, the counting was there.
The room comes into focus gradually, details sharpening like a photograph developing in solution.
Wood-paneled walls, warm with age and care.
A fireplace crackling softly in the corner, casting dancing shadows across plush carpeting.
Bookshelves lined with leather-bound volumes and strange artifacts—things I didn't understand then and still don't fully understand now.
The smell of pipe tobacco and something sweeter, something floral that I'll later learn was my mother's preferred blade oil.
Home.
Our home.
The one that burned the same night they died.
I'm sitting on a leather ottoman, positioned in front of a massive armchair that seems to swallow the man occupying it. He's reading something—papers, maybe, or documents—but he looks up when he feels my attention on him.
Dad.
The word catches in my throat.
He looks exactly how I remember him—tall even when seated, with broad shoulders and kind eyes that crinkle at the corners when he smiles. His hair is dark, shot through with silver at the temples, and there's a scar along his jawline that he always said he got "negotiating with difficult people."
Negotiating.
Even then, he was protecting me from the truth of what he did.
What we did.
What the Eastman name really meant.
"Sera."
His voice is warm.
Real.
So impossibly, devastatingly real that I feel tears prick at the corners of eyes I can't control, attached to a body that isn't mine anymore—or maybe was always mine, just smaller, just softer, just before the world taught me to be hard.
"Daddy?"
The word comes out high-pitched.
Childish.
The voice of the girl I used to be, before death and violence and the academy stripped away everything soft.
He sets aside his papers, giving me his full attention—something he always did, no matter how busy he was, no matter how many "negotiations" demanded his time. When he looked at me, I was the only thing that existed.
I didn't understand how rare that was until I lost it.
"You've been quiet today," he observes, tilting his head in that way he had—curious but patient, never pushing. "Something on your mind?"
My small hands fidget in my lap.
I watch them move—watch myself move—from somewhere both inside and outside this moment. Part of me is the child experiencing this for the first time. Part of me is the woman watching it unfold like a ghost at her own memory.
"Mrs. Peterson said something today," I mumble, not meeting his eyes. "At school."
"Oh?" He leans forward, elbows on knees, bringing himself closer to my level. "What did Mrs. Peterson say?"
I kick my feet.
Swing-swing-swing-swing.
Four times.
"She said I'm probably going to present as an Omega." The words come out sulky, pouty, the complaint of a child who's just learned the universe isn't fair. "Because of my scent glands developing or something. She said she can tell early, and I'm definitely going to be one."
Dad's expression doesn't change.
No surprise, no disappointment, no pity.
Just that same patient attention, waiting for me to finish.
"I don't want to be an Omega," I declare, crossing my arms over my chest in the universal gesture of childish defiance. "It's stupid."
"Why don't you want to be an Omega?"
The question is genuine.
Not leading.
Not correcting.
Just curious.
I huff, blowing a strand of hair out of my face—pink even then, though lighter, more pastel, not yet dyed to the vibrant bubblegum I'll favor later.
"Because Omegas are weak, obviously," I say it like it's the most self-evident thing in the world.
"Society hates them. Everyone looks down on them.
They have to follow Alpha orders and wear collars and—" I wrinkle my nose, remembering fragments of things I've overheard, things I've seen on the edges of adult conversations. "Why would I want to become one?"
Dad is quiet for a moment.
Considering.
When he speaks, his voice is thoughtful—not dismissive, not correcting, just... thinking out loud.
"Do you think your mother is weak?"
The question catches me off guard.
My arms uncross.
My kicks slow.
"What?"
"Your mother," he repeats patiently. "She's an Omega. Do you think she's weak?"
The very idea is so absurd that a giggle escapes—high and bright and untouched by the madness that will color it later.
"That's impossible," I declare with the absolute certainty only children possess. "Mommy can't be weak. She's badass!"
Dad's eyebrow arches.
One corner of his mouth twitches.
"Badass?"
I clap my hands over my mouth immediately, eyes going wide with the realization that I've said a Bad Word. The gesture is pure instinct—the reflexive cover-up of a child who knows they've crossed a line.
"The TV said it!" I protest through my fingers, muffled and defensive. "I just heard it from the TV! The man with the hat said it when he was fighting the monster and—"
Dad's expression shifts.
Not to anger.
To amusement.
He's fighting a smile now, that crinkle at the corners of his eyes deepening as he watches me panic over my linguistic transgression.
A giggle escapes me.
Then another.
Because it's funny—the way he's trying not to laugh, the way I'm trying not to laugh, the shared conspiracy of a child and her father getting away with something they shouldn't.
He pats his lap.
"Come here, little bird."
I don't hesitate.
My small body launches itself off the ottoman and crosses the space between us in three bounding steps—one-two-three-four would be better, but I'm not that precise yet, not that controlled, not that broken—before I'm scrambling up into his lap, settling into the familiar warmth of arms that have always meant safety.
He smells like tobacco and old books and something sharper underneath—steel, maybe. The smell of weapons and violence, hidden beneath the civilized veneer.
I didn't understand that then.
I understand it now.
"Your mother thought that too," he says, adjusting me on his knee so I'm comfortable, so I can see his face while he speaks. "In the beginning."
"Thought what?"
"That being an Omega made her weak." His voice is gentle, measured, the tone of someone sharing something important. "She hated it. Hated what it meant, how people treated her, the way everyone assumed they knew who she was just because of her designation."
I listen with the rapt attention of a child being told a story.
Because that's what it sounds like—a story.
Once upon a time, before I existed, before any of this was real.